


Catch

by Ptelea



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Gen, Good Big Brother Dick Grayson, in which dick was and will always be john and mary's son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28002465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ptelea/pseuds/Ptelea
Summary: Five times Dick caught one of the younger Bats, and one time he wasn't the one to do so
Relationships: Batfamily Members & Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain & Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown & Dick Grayson, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Comments: 36
Kudos: 267





	1. 1. Catch Red-handed (Catch a Break)

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Nothing especially graphic, but canon-level violence and threats
> 
> Pick and choose canon with handwave-y timelines. Starts at a time when Jason is Red Hood and an antagonist and Tim is Robin and continues from there.

So the good news, Dick thought as he ducked two punches in quick succession and jabbed back, was that:

(a) Red Hood wasn't shooting at him

(b) or trying to stab him.

The bad news was:

pretty much everything else.

Specifically: Red Hood had the USB drive they were fighting over already in his possession, so that was a point to him. Also Hood was not pulling his punches. He was putting enough power in them that if one landed solidly, Dick could well be walking away from this fight with a broken nose, jaw, or ribs.

He didn't _think_ Red Hood would keep on hitting if he managed to land a punch that knocked Nightwing out of the game. He would probably just go away in smug possession of the USB drive they were fighting for. This was Red Hood fighting Nightwing because he was in Hood's way, not out of revenge or animosity, though Dick knew it could tip over into either of those on a dime.

Aside from any potential injuries, Dick didn't want to deal with the embarrassment of losing this fight. Besides: He'd infiltrated the location! He'd downloaded the files! It was his USB drive, chock full of information about criminal plans!

Only to get the USB swiped when Red Hood snuck through the window to, presumably, do the same. Dick had been standing near the door to the room, listening carefully for security guards; they had stared at each other and at the computer for a startled moment before Hood had said, "well, for once one of you has made things more convenient, huh," grabbed the drive since it pretty much that second finished downloading, and darted back out the window.

The whole thing was embarrassing as hell and it had propelled him after Hood and up to the next rooftop over, which was how they'd gotten to where they were now, with Red Hood sending powerful, precise punches his way.

Dick tried a kick-to-the-gut option that earned him a second of breathing room when Red Hood backed, quick as a startled cat. They circled each other warily. Dick wasn't using his escrima; pulling them out seemed like it would result in bullets from Red Hood. So far, with weapons untouched, this was a skirmish. Hurting each other might happen as a side effect--a welcome one on Hood's part, Dick was sure--but it wasn't the goal.

Dick didn't want to go scorched earth. Didn't want to deal with Bruce and Alfred's tired eyes if he won but had to report that he'd left Hood to slink off to tend injuries on his own. Didn't want to deal with Tim looking heartsick at Dick's inevitable injuries if he lost, at what Tim's once-idol was capable of doing.

De-escalation was unlikely to be successful, but Dick should probably try it anyway. This wasn't the first time they'd clashed when their respective cases turned out to have a common thread. Historically, Hood resisted commands, resisted claims of precedence (Dick might have gotten to a particular case first, but he was just a johnny-come-lately, not even born in Gotham, ditched the city periodically to live elsewhere, etc. etc.), resisted entreaties to work with them, resisted violently when Dick called him Jason. 

That left...banter? Plaintive whininess? Distraction? Maybe Dick could swipe the USB back quickly and run for it? He'd been close enough on Hood's heels that the other man hadn't had a chance to stash it securely, just slipped it in an outside pocket of his jacket. "Hood, come on. You're trying to kidnap what I've rightfully stolen!"

The Princess Bride reference at least got him a sound from the helmet that was probably amusement. Neither of them fell out of ready posture, though. Hood countered: "And hey, I appreciate that you did that work. You notice how I haven't shot you yet?"

"You could express that appreciation by giving it back to me?" Dick tried. "If you have a specific concern or question, I'd send that information along to you."

"Oh, you would, huh? Free and clear, I'm sure."

Contingent on terms, which Hood damn well knew: no killing, and an upper limit to injuries. Dick didn't say it. If there wasn't a chance of it, he might have let Hood go and just tried to broker a deal for a copy of the information himself as some sort of peace offering. Probably not, out of principle and bloody-mindedness. But one of the criminals in this ring had his hands in a couple of other very dirty, very harmful ventures, and while Hood's murder rate had gone down, it certainly wasn't zero. Dick didn't want his slip-up to contribute to a rising murder rate.

"Yeah, that's not happening," Hood said. "But hell, you saved me some work tonight, I'm in a good mood, I won't even brag about this around town. Take the loss, Nightwing."

"Big words," Dick said. "For someone who hasn't gotten away clean yet." He snapped out a punch, and then it was back to the fray. Hood moved with extraordinary speed and agility for such a large man. It was a scenario Dick was trained for--given that it described B, it was basically the most common scenario Dick was trained for--but that didn't mean it wasn't a challenge every time. He had the edge for about four seconds, managed even to grab at Hood's pocket before he had to dart back to avoid what would have been an arm-numbing strike.

"You are getting on my fucking nerves," Red Hood growled. "Just gonna try to steal it back, not even win it fair and square?"

"You stole it from me!" Dick protested.

"We're in my fucking territory," Hood snapped back, which just, no, they were not going to cede huge swaths of Gotham to Jason's blood-drenched version of justice. 

Dick was going to say as much, but then Hood's next punch did connect. Not well, not full on, but enough to send Dick tumbling to the ground.

It was the work of a moment to spring back up again, but there was a second when--standing back up and out of range, Dick retraced it in his head. His hand had only been flat on the ground for a moment, to stabilize himself and push up. He'd been standing already before Hood's boot had landed, hard, in the place his hand had been. "What the fuck was _that_ ," he asked, half angry and half genuinely shocked. Red Hood was brutal, but he tended to have a sense of...proportionality? This had been a weaponless skirmish over a routine case. There were a million small hand bones, and gloves only protected so much, and--trying for a shattered hand, a potential career-ending injury, when he was on the ground? 

Looking back on it later, Dick wondered if Jason hadn't surprised himself with it, had just seen an opening and acted on automatic without an intention to escalate. 

But it did escalate, of course, because nothing did that faster than Dick expressing disapproval of Red Hood's methods. "Fuck you," Hood snarled, and....well, he didn't draw a gun, just a knife, so they weren't at red alert yet. Dick backed another wary step at the unsheathed knife, at the way Hood's body language flipped suddenly from obstacle to threat. "You really wanna do this, Nightwing? Because I was gonna let you walk away, no harm, no foul, but the longer we do this the more I'm tempted to slice off a couple fingers as a reminder to _stay the fuck out of my business_."

He wasn't joking. The next attack was a brutal charge that Nightwing countered with escrima.

(Later, Dick would sit in the dark of his bedroom and flex his fingers, look at the shape of his hands against the bit of light filtering in from around the window blinds, and wonder what would have happened. Who would have won; what cost Jason would have exacted if he had, whether he would have talked himself into following through on his threat with the knife. It was a stretch to say they'd gotten lucky, but the interruption to that fight might not have been the worst thing in the world.)

At the time, the whistle of bullets didn't read as lucky. "You've been lurking around!" shouted one of the criminals Dick had been tracking, though which of them he meant was an open question. "Get them! Bring them in!" A pause in the bullets, which was welcome; eight men charging towards them, less so.

Well, no. Dick supposed he should say that it wasn't welcome, but honestly he liked fighting and two against eight wasn't that bad. These weren't fighters of Red Hood's caliber. Dick still took a quick moment to send a signal requesting backup, but it was more a precaution in case this turned less into two against eight and more into one against nine.

He and Red Hood didn't have each other's back in the fray that ensued, not exactly, but they didn't work against each other either. Dick was busy with his own side of the fight, and avoiding the bodies of the four men already downed in the melee and groaning, when someone got in a lucky punch on Hood. Dick only saw it in his peripheral vision, but when he thought it through later he thought it had been an accident--they'd intended to bring him down, but the roof was flat and slick and they were near the edge, and instead Jason went over.

"Shit! You stupid idiot!" the ringleader said. He disengaged and ran, and his men paused like they weren't sure whether to follow.

Dick brought the remaining guys down fast and hard, other than another who fled, and ran in the opposite direction, towards the roof edge. Red Hood carried a grapple; but Dick hadn't heard the distinctive sound of it, didn't see the anchor point. If Jason had fallen...it was only a two-story building, short and squat. Survival rates from that height were good and Jason knew how to fall but the type of injuries it might leave...

Jason wasn't on the ground in a crumpled heap, or dangling from a line, or vanished altogether. He was holding onto the roof edge.

"Oh, thank God," Dick said, and flattened himself, getting a solid hold on Jason's wrists. "Do you--" Dammit. Scanning the roof, he couldn't see where they could set an anchor point, and the material wasn't good for it. (Possibly intentionally not good, a preventive measure against either thieves or Bats.) He looked back: everyone who'd been down was still down.

"You couldn't just let me get away with it," Red Hood said, almost contemplatively. "I mighta sent you some info later, but no, you're a stubborn shit. Have some free advice from a crime lord, Nightwing: next time get further away from the scene before you get into a spat with someone that ruins the getaway."

"Great lecture, Red," Dick said, "how about we continue it later, when we're both back up on the rooftop, or hey, good idea, even further away!" He sent back another glance. Had that been a rustle? No.

"Did you even bother with zip ties, you stupid shit?" Hood growled. "Are you trying to get yourself flung off the roof too?"

"I was checking on you!" (unsaid but implied: _you ungrateful asshole_ ) "Can you hold on while I do?"

"Oh, sure," Hood said lightly.

"Just, all right, hang on," Dick said, and secured the criminals, taking their guns away before hurrying back to Red Hood. "Okay, let's get you back up."

It wasn't as easy as it sounded. Dick was strong, but Hood outweighed him substantially now and had spent a portion of his strength already. The walls were sheer, nothing to provide Hood a toe hold, and Dick had nothing to brace himself against, nothing to anchor himself to on this goddamn roof. He could hold Hood there, but pulling him up wasn't happening. "Roofs and walls with texture, dammit," Dick muttered to himself.

"Fuck," Red Hood said. He was looking downward, and one of his hands moved in Dick's grip, like maybe he was getting a better grip, or maybe he was thinking of letting go.

"Just hold on. I sent out a request for backup. Someone else will be coming."

"That is not an incentive to stick around," Hood said tightly, and he looked down again. 

A sound from behind him. Dick twisted his head. One of the criminals was moving, but scooching backwards rather than forwards. 

A twist of Jason's wrists in his, throwing off his hands. Fingers loosening on the edge. Dick caught his wrists again and clamped down hard. "Hood, what are you--"

"Just let me go," Jason snarled up at him. "Let's get this fucking over with. It's not that bad a fall."

"Bad enough," Dick said. "Hood, please. Please don't--" _(Please don't fall while I watch. Please don't get hurt or killed on my watch. Please don't make this another way I failed you.)_ He was so, so angry at some of what Jason had done since he'd come back, hated what Jason did around the city, but he didn't want things to go down this way, didn't want this on his hands.

"You stupid _shit_ , you think it's gonna help me if one of them gets back up and kills you because you're playing distracted do-gooder?" Jason said furiously. "Just let me drop and take my chances!"

" _Please_ ," Dick said.

"Fine, fucking fine," Jason spat. "Just...shut up and keep an eye and ear on what's going on behind you. This is a fucking exercise in futility, but whatever, you want to hang on for a while before you have to let go, fine."

Dick held on. "I can do this all day," he murmured after a moment, but quietly.

A snort. "Figures you'd be a Steve Rogers fan."

"I do like Steve Rogers, but Peggy Carter's my favorite, really," Dick said, glancing back again, but then he shut up.

Waiting in silence was agonizing. Dick's shoulders were burning. It probably felt like it had been longer than it was, Dick twitching at every sign of motion and regained strength from the guys he'd tied up, by the time he heard the distinct roar of the Batmobile. 

The light patter of feet on the roof not long after was Robin, not Batman, and from the quick move of the helmet upward Hood probably could tell the difference too. "Make sure they're still secure first, all right?" Dick said over his shoulder. "Then help me pull Red Hood up?" He tried to make it straightforward, matter of fact, but Tim halted for a beat before (he was so amazingly brave) he nodded sharply and kept moving.

Tim was slight but strong, but Dick and Jason weren't as fresh as they'd been; for a moment Dick worried that even with Tim's extra strength this wasn't going to work, that Jason would fall backwards and down in the scramble. But then, no, his weight shifted the right way, and they were all up on the roof, Dick and Jason shaking out their arms and flexing their fingers. 

A moment's pause. Red Hood was looking in Robin's direction, head cocked. Dick checked positioning reflexively. B had theories about Jason's resurrection, about Lazarus rage, about Robin acting as a trigger. Robin wasn't directly behind Dick, but he was closer to Dick than to Hood; if Hood went at Robin Dick would be able to get between them. 

Dick didn't pull the escrima back out, didn't quite shift to ready position because that might be taken as an escalation that would send things in the wrong direction, but he stood a bit more alertly. "I'm going to call the cops on these mooks," he said casually. 

"You do that," Hood said, and then he was the one backing away. A jump to the next rooftop over. A building with better, more Bat-friendly surfaces, evidently: a quick swing down from there, and he was out of sight. Nightwing and Robin watched silently. A little rustle at his side from Robin, perhaps a suppressed question. If Jason hadn't had ties to the family, they would have been trying to bring him in as well. Granted, they both had Batman's orders not to engage, but Dick had thoroughly blown that out of the water tonight.

"You all right?" Robin asked.

"I'm not hurt," Dick answered absently, and then, "Oh dammit," because in the rooftop drama he'd completely forgotten about the USB drive. 

Nothing for three days after, while Dick tried to piece together information on his case from other sources. Then the worst person in the ring, the one Dick had worried Red Hood would kill, was found in his home after an anonymous tip was given to police. 

He wasn't dead. Beaten to the point he would never fully recover, including head injuries that would likely prevent him from planning or covering up crimes ever again.

A day later, a cache of information was sent not to Nightwing's secure inbox, but to Robin's. It might have been some measure of gratitude or a clearing of a perceived debt. It might have been a condescending slap from Red Hood: _I've done the important work. Do cleanup if you want, and by the way I can get to Robin._ It might have been both. Like everything about the whole situation, it left Dick feeling off balance and heartsore. 

If he'd been paying more attention to the room's window and less to its door at the building; if he hadn't let Red Hood get the USB drive; if he'd driven them further away before he'd tried to get it back; if he'd won that fight decisively before they'd been interrupted...

If he'd worked harder in the past, been the kind of brother to Jason that he'd become to Tim. Granted that Tim had been eager for affection if unused to it and Jason had been prickly even on those occasions when Dick had set aside his own issues from being replaced. But if he'd tried more than the bare minimum...

He eventually set the mental tangle of it aside. Jason hadn't fallen, hadn't shattered on the ground. The way events had gone down didn't feel good to Dick, and even to his optimistic self saying they'd gotten lucky was a stretch, but...

"It's the day's work done," he murmured to himself, an old phrase of John Grayson's. It fell flat, but...it could have been worse. They'd all walked away from it whole. He'd deal with the rest of it later.


	2. 2. Catch in the Act (Catch Your Breath)

It was three in the morning, and Dick had not slept in a while, which meant he was inclined to theatrics when he proclaimed, "Aha! Caught in the act!" 

Tim, who was sidling to the refrigerator, froze and stared with wide eyes at where Dick was eating crackers at the kitchen table. In the dark, because it was 3 AM.

"You are supposed to be _asleep_ , Timothy," Dick said sternly, pointing an accusing finger. " _Alfred's orders._ " Batman's orders, too, but those had been Cave orders, and part of being Robin was cultivating a spirit of selective obedience when it came to Batman's orders. But above stairs, Alfred's orders were sacrosanct. 

"I just wanted a bit of a snack," Tim wheedled, "to help me get to sleep."

"Mmm," Dick said. "A bit of a snack, but _is that your phone I see in your hand_?"

"For light! I just brought it along to use the flashlight function!" Tim attempted, precious little liar that he was. "Come on, I'll head to bed after I eat, I promise. Alfred doesn't need to know about this."

"It wouldn't make him happy," Dick said, shoving a cracker in his mouth.

"It would not," Tim admitted, "but that's why there's no need to tell him, right? Besides..." A shifting of posture. Oh dear, Dick had been afraid of this. "...if he asks how you knew, what are you going to tell him?"

"Technically, I am not," Dick said, shoving one last cracker in his mouth while he could, because he could see where this was going, "under Alfred's orders." He was a grown-up, who did not even live at the manor. This was a visit! He was an independent vigilante who did not answer to Alfred! (Not that he would ever say that out loud in the manor, of course. Or anywhere in this universe.)

"Technically, maybe," Tim proclaimed, with a pretty good accusing finger of his own. "But you are under Alfred's _strong recommendation_ to get some sleep."

They stared at each other for a moment in mutual culpability.

"I will sell you out," Tim hissed, "don't think I won't. If I have to deal with his disappointed look, so will you. I will arrange it so that the words, 'but you're older, Master Richard, you should have known better,' will be said."

Dick gasped. Perfidy. Horror. "You think I won't throw you under the bus?" Dick said in turn. "I'll do it and be happy!"

But it was a weak response, and he knew it, probably because Dick knew full well--and Tim was maybe beginning to trust?--that Dick would throw himself under the bus if it would help Tim out. "How could I know better, after all?" Tim mused, building on his victory. "When I have your example to follow?"

"Tim," Dick said, in mingled reproach and admiration. Tim really had come a long way from the anxious, eager-to-please kid he'd been at the start. It was always a delight to see him use his scheming streak in a spirit of play instead of for Gotham's Greater Good. 

There was a creak. They both froze. The manor was known to have such sounds. It might also be a floorboard under someone's foot. Were it Bruce, he might become another member of their conspiracy. Were it Alfred, however....

Dick held up his finger to his lips. "Grab whatever you came for, and get it quietly," he said, near soundlessly, "and nothing with caffeine in it!" 

Tim did an obedient quick, near-silent scavenge that steered clear of anything chocolate. Not even opening the fridge, which would shed light, because he was an adorable and very smart little schemer. "To the bedrooms," Dick said, and they scampered on tiptoe, looking carefully in all directions before entering any hallways, on the verge of laughter all the way. 

Almost home free, when the door to Bruce's room creaked open. Dick froze. Tim shamelessly made himself a narrow figure behind him. Bruce peered his head out and grunted at him. Them.

It was a sleepy, interrogative sort of grunt, so Dick said, "No worries, all's well." He pulled Tim out from behind him--at this stage you could not attempt subterfuge, only brazen it out--and trapped him with a brotherly arm around his shoulders. "I've caught a wild Tim but am escorting him back to his lair. We were never here, you didn't see us, this was all a dream."

Bruce sighed deeply. An excellent start. That was the sigh of a man who did not want to get involved. Dick knew how to do this: throw out a little nonsense that was an implicit promise of more nonsense to come if Bruce didn't let this go, mix in a dollop of reassurance. 

"We definitely don't need to bring Alfred into this," Tim said, which made Dick sigh despairingly. That had been a blaring red misstep: the slight tilt of Bruce's head made it obvious.

"You can work on the concept of overkill and protesting too much with him after he's gotten some sleep," Dick said, and more or less steered Tim directly through the door of the bedroom that had become Tim's over time. Dick closed the door behind them and leaned against it, pressing an ear to the door. Bruce's door closed, and Dick didn't hear footsteps, which didn't mean that much, but...probably Bruce was on the inside?

"Well, he might let it drop," Dick said. "Or at least not resort to Alfred." 

"Mmm," Tim said around a jaw-cracking yawn. 

Dick snagged Tim's phone from his hand and put it on the desk, nudging Tim bed-wards. "Were you actually hungry?" he asked, because sometimes Tim wasn't, was just looking for an excuse for a little restless movement and a change of location.

Tim said, "Not really?" so Dick scooped the protein bar and two cookies from him and placed them on the desk as well, grabbing a tissue to act as a napkin. 

"It'll be there if you need it. Into the bed with you!" he said, and Tim nodded but swayed in place.

"I did _try_ to go to sleep earlier," he said sullenly. "It's just..."

Difficult, sometimes. Dick hummed a little noise of understanding. "If it's that kind of night, we can stay up and watch something," he offered, because Tim had two kinds of sleepless nights: the ones where he stayed up because he had things to do and resented the demands of his body, and someone else had to act as his brakes, and the kind where he tried to go to sleep but couldn't, when directing him to bed didn't help because he'd just lie there with his brain zipping away with unhappy restless thoughts. "I'll take the heat with Alfie, even."

"No, I think I'm tired enough to go to sleep now," Tim said, but he eyed the bed as if it were an enemy before huffing a breath and crossing over to lay down. "Good night, Dick."

"Good night," Dick said, but he lingered for a moment before crossing over to bend down and press a kiss to Tim's forehead. He felt the urge to do more, to do all the things Dick's parents and to some extent Bruce had done for him when he was young, that Tim's parents should have done: pull up the covers; card his hair; tell a story; bring a glass of water; sing a song. But being offered too much of that sort of thing sometimes upset Tim more than anything else.

"Are you okay?" Tim asked earnestly as Dick straightened back up. "You were up too. Will you be able to sleep?"

He was such a sweet kid. "Yeah," Dick said. "I was just a little wired after tonight. Needed to calm down and catch my breath, you know? I'll sleep okay now."

Tim yawned again. "Okay. G'night."

"G'night," Dick said, and left, easing Tim's door shut behind him.

An expectation he hadn't realized he'd harbored until it didn't come true: for some reason he'd thought Bruce would be standing in the hallway, or that Bruce's door would crack open again so Bruce could verify that all was well, that Dick's nonsense earlier hadn't been to throw him off from something more serious. But Bruce's door stayed shut and the hallway empty and after a moment of waiting Dick crossed to his own room, his old room, to brush his teeth.

Bruce had never been a light-hearted man, but he'd used to respond to lightness. (Hadn't he?) The exchange earlier had felt a bit like the old days, when Bruce had willingly played along with Dick's silliness as solemn straight man. ( _Hadn't_ he?) But maybe tonight had been less Bruce playing along with them, letting them get away with something, than it was Bruce just...truly not wanting to deal with them. Him. 

Dick turned off the bathroom light and climbed into bed. It was hard to tell with Bruce. He'd seemed better in some ways with Jason's return, but more dour in others, and there'd been so many other things going on that had put them all through the wringer. Red Hood hadn't killed in a month, though, and it seemed like that had coincided with a lack of other crises: they were all getting a chance to catch their breath these days. 

(If they were, it was the breath caught at the top of a roller coaster, before the mad rush of future events: Damian and Bruce's "death" in the timestream, the fracture between him and Tim, Tim's faraway travels and Ra's and a window and Tim falling and a desperate catch. But Dick didn't know the shape of things that were yet to come.)

A creak that might have been a door. Dick held his breath and listened. Tim, sneaking out again? But it had seemed to come more from the direction of B's room, so maybe it was Bruce, and that second maybe-creak could be him checking to make sure that Tim really had gone to sleep?

Dick stayed awake a bit, but if there were further sounds, he didn't hear them, and...his own door never cracked open, like it had sometimes when he was young, even when he'd been a bratty teenager and they'd argued. 

No, that made sense. He wasn't the Robin of the household any longer, and if anyone got a check-in, it should definitely be Tim, who deserved so much more attention than he got, who'd been through so much. Dick was something to B, they'd built that much back up; he was welcome in the Cave and in the manor again, so he was _something_ to B, but it wasn't like he was B's kid anymore, was it? He couldn't be, obviously: he wasn't a kid at all. Dick was old enough now to be the person who checked in on Robin and tucked him into bed and dispensed a good night kiss. Getting himself into a self-pitying funk by wishing for something different...that was just being in the manor, in his childhood bedroom, and overtired, and it'd be solved by going to sleep.

(Did his door open quietly later? Maybe. Maybe not, of course: Bruce might have been asleep. Or he had gone to check in on Tim, and ended up keeping an insomniac Tim company. Or he was awake in his room but he had other weightier matters on his mind, so that the thought never occurred to him. Or it did, but he talked himself out of it, telling himself that his oldest son had outgrown such things, that it would be unwelcome if he were caught at it, that it would spark another fight about independence. 

But maybe Dick's door did open quietly at some point, for a few moments. If it did, the sound was so much a part of Dick's childhood that it didn't register to him, a light sleeper elsewhere but a deep one at the manor, as a signal to wake up--so if it did, he never knew.)


	3. 3. What's the Catch? (Catch Off Guard)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing graphic, but some vomiting happens in this chapter.

"So what does it do?" Spoiler said. "Am I gonna grow tentacles or something?"

She sounded brave and defiant and scared all tangled up, and Nightwing said, scrolling frantically through the records of the experimental drug Spoiler had gotten injected with during the fracas, "No! No, it says it's supposed to be harmless. It says it's a pain reliever, actually." He looked up at her. "Are you noticing any analgesic effect?"

"Huh," she said, poking at a patch of her arm that was maybe bruised under the uniform. "There...might be? I guess as far as untested drugs, that's kind of...useful? What's the catch?"

"It says in a small percentage of test subjects, patches of numbness at the injection site and mild nausea," Dick said. He tried to sound matter-of-fact rather than skeptical, since it would do neither of them any good to panic. He wasn't going to put a lot of trust in the accuracy of a crooked pharmaceutical company's records, but it did seem like they might have gotten lucky. "Still, we should get you back to the Cave for a blood test and monitoring." He scanned in the file quickly and sent it on ahead digitally to Agent A.

"Really? That's it?" Spoiler sounded skeptical enough for both of them. "No hair loss, or jellified internal organs, or gross itchy rashes until I claw my own skin off?"

Yikes. He asked, a little alarmed, "Are you feeling itchy?"

She held her arms out in front of her, pushed up one sleeve. The skin on her arm and what he could see on her face and neck seemed fine and rash-free. "A little, but I'm pretty sure it's psychological. Since it just started when I said 'itchy gross rash.'"

Frankly he was starting to feel a bit itchy himself. "Come on, Cave," Dick said, snagging the last few hard drives and throwing them in a backpack for transport.

They made their way out of the building to the sound of distant sirens. "You should probably stay and explain," Spoiler said. "I mean, I'm fine, and this is one where they could use the context. I'll head straight back and get the all-clear from Agent A."

"Eh, I'll see you back, unknown substance protocols," Dick said. "They've got the information and there aren't any active threats."

He thought her jaw might have tightened under her mask at what she probably perceived as him pulling rank, but she didn't argue, and they walked towards where they'd stashed their bikes discussing their findings agreeably enough. 

For all that Dick was following protocols, it took him off guard when, two steps from the bikes, Spoiler went down suddenly, and Dick just barely caught her before she crashed to the ground. 

A moment's pause, and then she started flailing, not a seizure but purposeful if sloppy punches as she tried to get away from him. "Spoiler!" he said, and eased her to the ground, moving back to give her space and crouching in front of her. "Spoiler, can you hear me?"

She didn't respond for a moment, and then she started moving again, hitting at her own arms, her own legs, the ground.

"Spoiler," he said, grabbing her wrists in a light restraining hold to keep her from hurting herself. Her eyes were unfocused but she seemed to be trying to track his voice. He reflexively lowered it to command voice, leader voice, Batman voice, because there were some responses that B had drilled into them deeper than thought, and said, "Spoiler. Robin. _Report_."

She stilled under his hands. Blinked several times. Said shakily, "Batman? Nightwing?" 

"Nightwing, today," he said. "Can you tell me where you are?"

"Everything went wrong and now everything's blurry and I can't feel anything and everything's--" Then she leaned sideways and threw up. Her voice was clearer in the aftermath. "Fuck. Evil pharma factory, mystery injection. I'm numb all over and my vision's going in and out and I feel like everything's spinning."

"I'm sending for the Batmobile," Dick said. "I'm going to feel for your pulse, all right?" 

"Okay," she said. She was trying so hard to stay calm, he could tell. "Are you right now? I can't feel your fingers."

"Yeah, I've got you. Fast but steady," he said. "I'm going to take off your glove and put the pulse oximeter on... Good read, you're getting enough oxygen. All right. We're just going to sit here until the Batmobile comes. I'm sorry, but can I take a vial of blood?" Sometimes things broke down in weird ways; getting a blood sample as soon as possible could be crucial.

"YesshitI'm going to throw up again," she said, and did so. "Fuck. That's you, right? In front of me?"

"That's me," he said. "I'm here. Just hang in a little longer and we'll be back in the Cave in no time."

"Yeah, okay." She spat sideways to clear the taste. "Shit. I guess it's a good thing you were all protocol-guy."

There was something a little sour there, like she thought he was going to gloat or give her a lecture. And yeah, obviously it was good he hadn't let her go off on her own, but he could see where he maybe would have made a different call if the scene would have been more dangerous for the police, and also-- "I'm just glad we weren't on the bikes yet," Dick said fervently, because if the reaction had taken a few more minutes to kick in they could have been in big trouble. "I'm commandeering the Batmobile, next time I break into anything to do with pharma."

"Yeah. Am I hearing it or am I getting auditory hallucinations now too?"

The roar of the Batmobile was upon them, closer even than the sirens. "Nope, that's our ride," Dick said.

"If the kid's driving, I'm waiting for the next bus," Steph said. "He's a menace on the road."

"The kid is supposed to be at school," Dick said. Which didn't mean it wasn't Damian driving. Bruce had a femur fracture that was healing up and he was supposed to be immobile; Tim was out of town. Damian coming home early under his own initiative was entirely possible, and he did love having an excuse to drive the Batmobile. Or it could be Agent A or just on autopilot.

To his surprise, it wasn't Batman who stepped out, or Damian, but... "Hood?" Dick asked, and wondered if he'd gotten hit with something hallucinatory in the lab too. Red Hood hadn't been an active antagonist for a little while now, but he didn't work with them either.

"I was dropping off something for Agent A, B apparently can't drive or risk permanent leg damage, I got pressed into service, and this had better not become a fucking _thing_ ," Red Hood said tersely, and crouched down by them. His voice directed at Steph was noticeably kinder. "Hey, Blondie, Doc Thompkins is going to meet us there. You up to moving?"

"Might throw up again," Spoiler said, sounding almost cheerful. "Also, my balance is fucked and I don't think I can walk because I can't feel the ground. Who wants to help me into the Batmobile and maybe get puked on?"

"Your mission, Dickwing," Hood said. "I mean...don't get me, wrong, Blondie, you're great as far as Bats go, but I draw the line at puke."

"On the bright side," Steph said once Dick had picked her up carefully and gotten them into the back seat of the Batmobile (happily without puke), "I think my vision's getting better. Or maybe it's just that Jay's helmet is really, super obnoxiously red. Like an overripe strawberry."

"Wow, are you insulting me just because I wouldn't let you puke on me? I'm not going to be fucking lectured on color choice by eggplant girl." Dick blinked at them in surprise. He'd known vaguely that Jason got on with the women of Gotham's Bat contingent better than the men, but he hadn't expected teasing banter. 

"I bet Wing could position me so next time I puke I aim over the back of your seat," Spoiler said thoughtfully. "Eggplant girl, huh!"

"Maybe I can draw some blood before we start weaponizing your vomit," Dick said. Jason was driving fast but steady; he should be able to draw some without any problem.

Spoiler frowned and said, "Killjoy," but she held out an arm for him, and she did seem to be doing a bit better. 

By the time they were back in the Cave, she said, looking more directly at him, "Vision's definitely better and things are less spinny and unbalanced too. I think it's clearing."

Dick breathed out a sigh of relief. "Numbness?"

"Not as much," she said. "I'm getting more pressure and stuff. I still feel like their records on this were a total lie."

"Well, that's why we took them down," Dick said, helping her out of the car.

"Fuck yeah we did," she said, and then threw up one last time, mostly over his left boot.

Leslie and Alfred rushed toward them. B...hobbled. Jason was looking up at the ceiling, conspicuously silent: Dick assumed he was torn between sympathy and worry for Stephanie and mocking laughter for Dick.

"So, uh, sorry about that," she said later, after he'd cleaned off and changed. Leslie had examined her and B had decrypted the pharmaceutical company's more detailed records, and everything pointed toward the initial reaction being the worst and the drug clearing her system in another hour or two. Agent A had set her up for an evening of monitoring nonetheless. "Thanks for not dropping me when I puked on you?"

"Eh," he said, dropping into the seat next to her to keep her company, since B was busy at his computer. "I once threw up on Superman when he was babysitting me and he was flying me around, and he managed not to drop me, so I was just paying it forward." 

She grinned. "Babysitter Superman, weird. Didn't you have, like, an elephant as a babysitter or something too?"

He wondered how that had come up. Sometimes he liked that stories of his time with his first family circulated in his current one; sometimes he worried that his background was just a piece of colorful quirky oddness to them, not something real. That the people he'd loved were just eccentric characters to be laughed at. But Steph's face seemed to hold friendly interest, so he said lightly, "Well, yeah, but Zitka didn't get thrown up on, because Zitka didn't let me eat three hot dogs and four scoops of ice cream."

From the computer, Bruce made a sound that managed to be a scathing indictment of both Clark's early babysitting skills and his general judgment.

"Yeah? You're the one who let me eat three bags of candy corn on my first Halloween here, B. How'd that work out for you?" Dick called to him cheerfully over his shoulder. 

Steph snorted. "Doesn't sound like it turned out well for you either."

"I got the satisfaction of eating the candy, though. B just got nothing but trouble out of the whole thing. Different cost-benefit ratio."

Steph said, "Huh. I guess if you go by that, I can at least balance the satisfaction of making life difficult for crooked pharma against the vomiting."

"There you go," Dick said. "Good day's work, in the end." 

Her face scrunched up in denial, and she said, "I'm still not applying 'good' to today."

"It was a stretch," he admitted. "Anyway, how you feeling?"

"Better, better. Hey, I realized technically this shit works as advertised--I'm feeling no pain. But I guess we found the catch."

"Hell of a catch," Dick said.


	4. 4. Catch Up

For the most part, the lines of connection between Dick and Cass ran through others: Bruce, Babs, Tim. They didn't miss each other when apart, though they were happy enough when their paths crossed.

But they weren't confidantes, so they didn't catch up in traditional ways. Instead, they headed to the manor's dance floor and spent long afternoons with music and minimal speaking: "let's try--" and "if you move like that--" and "can you--?" and "wanna try--?"

Cass was voracious when it came to dance styles, trying everything out although she'd formed her favorites over time. Sometimes she clearly didn't need him and was just sharing her realm and her joy in it for a while; other times she wanted to try something that needed a partner, and knew he was quick to pick things up physically.

It wasn't Dick's world but he'd learned a decent amount of social dancing when he was younger. Reluctantly at first, because he knew he was learning it for Gotham's stuffy events, but later he'd found it fun in itself. He'd learned both lead and follow, partly because Dick had occasionally masqueraded as a girl in those days, but mostly because Bruce tended to believe that if you learned a skill you should learn it thoroughly. Since Mary and John Grayson had held that philosophy as well, it was one that seemed natural to Dick. They'd made sure he understood the basic mechanics for both catch and flight, even if he hadn't had the strength for catching as a kid.

For the most part follow, like flight, was more fun, with more chances for spins and dips. Dick had taught his friends the rudiments in turn, and he had good memories of it: Donna or Roy spinning him out and back; seeing how deeply he could dip Wally before he risked dropping him. 

He wished fiercely that Cass had had those types of childhood and teenage moments that he'd gotten: waltzes where he followed Alfred's solemn lead; foxtrots where he inexpertly shuffled a patient Bruce around; sweet dances with Babs where he impressed her despite herself; improvisational dances fill with laughter as Kori flung him around. Dick fancifully hoped that those memories of lightness somehow transmitted themselves through his arms, his fingers, when they danced together, to help Cass catch up on some of what she'd missed. He almost always led, with Cass, to let her have the fun spins and dips--and today, the lifts.

Cass loved variety in dance, but she also loved perfection, and so this was a day of joyful repetition and discipline that had echoes of his earliest training. Mary Grayson's voice, full of encouragement: "That's right, Robin darling. Now try it again, just like that." John Grayson's voice, full of love: "We got time for two more tries before you're off to bed. Plan it out, focus, make it count." 

Turn, move, catch, lift, air, transition back to ground, turn. Catch, lift, air, ground. Smoothing out the little moments of sloppiness, tiny adjustments to the placement of his hands and her feet, the arch of her arms in the air. Catch, lift, air, ground, until little tendrils of hair were plastered to their sweat-damp necks.

Dick finally admitted exhaustion on a laugh: "I think I've got maybe three more in me, tops."

She studied him and laughed back and held up two fingers: two more times, doubling as a V for victory.

"Let's make 'em count," he said.


	5. 5. Catch and Release

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning on this chapter: one Batfam member is mind controlled into being physically violent towards another

Both Tetch and Crane had been around enough that they had their share of acolytes and copycats, and so the Bats would work out later that the villains who put Nightwing under mind control had used aspects of both their work. Dartgun to down him and get something in his bloodstream; mind-altering device implanted in his ear and at the base of his neck while he was down; and a picture of his targets left in front of him, with accompanying audio reinforcement through the device.

Dick never remembered much of it, later. A haze, with a few clear moments. Seeing a small figure in vivid colors and locking onto it as the target. A moment of leaping across a rooftop, gaining on his target in the air, the sheer glee of the chase. Ignoring the voices in his earpiece, the flash of disdain he'd felt at their inept guidance. Ignoring too, when he managed to close in on the target, the target's blows against his arms, his side, his face.

The satisfaction when he had his hands around the target's throat, when all that active movement began to slow.

He remembered enough later, to know that when he stopped and let go and let Damian fall away to the ground, when he stepped two paces back, it wasn't mercy. 

It was not mercy, nor some vestigial sense of right and wrong, nor some remnant of Batman's training not to kill. It was not him fighting against the mind control, nor that Robin's pleas to resist had gotten through to him. It was not love. It was so far from love.

It was simply that he'd been revelling in the chase, in the catch, and he wanted to do it again.

The target pushed himself up. Said something from a bruised throat that meant nothing to the callous thing that Dick had become, which was waiting impatiently for him to get up. Dick tilted his head and bounced a bit on his feet when the target drew a glittering katana. Having to dodge something sharp should add a layer of interest, once the target got off the ground.

It was taking an absurdly long time. Was the target trying to draw him in? Dick considered the moves it would take to close in quickly, to wrest that glittering katana and turn it about, use it to pin down the target. But finally the target began to struggle to its feet.

Dick remembered the smile that spread across his own face, the anticipation. And then something else that warned him of a shadow up and to his right. Instincts that sent him into ready position, to fight or to run.

From the shadow, some directive that didn't register, except it contained the deep growled word, "Robin."

Something. The sound, or the word, unbalanced his feet, divided his attention in strange ways between the shadow and the target. Even though he was watching for it, when Batman's flying tackle came, it caught him off guard.

When he woke, he was himself again; it was (they told him) three days later; his head was cleared of all triggers, confirmed by J'onn. Other than bruising, he was fine.

"Is he okay?" Dick asked when the rest filed out, when it was just him and Batman in the room. _How is he_ , he meant, because he knew already that Damian wasn't hurt in any permanent physical way. Or maybe: _does he hate me?_

"Worried about you. He wanted to be here when you woke up," B said. "I suspect he'll be upset with us, for letting it happen while he was at school. He doesn't blame you."

Dick shook his head. _He should_ , he wanted to say. Maybe not for the chase, for the injury, but for falling prey to the villains: that was on Dick. 

And he noticed Bruce's silence. _He doesn't blame you_ wasn't the same as, _Nor do I_ or _No one could blame you_.

Batman stood. "Come on, chum," he said quietly. "It's almost time for dinner, and Agent A would like to see you too."

Dick nodded. Stood up. "You'll warn Robin, before he comes home," he said. "So that he's not taken by surprise. You'll make sure it's all right with him."

B was silent.

"B," Dick said. Ordered. "There's a goddamn difference between him theoretically wanting to see me and him having to sit at dinner with no notice with someone who tried to kill him, so just--"

"It will be fine," Batman said. He held up his hand when Dick was about to protest. "I will warn him. But he won't thank you if you try to avoid him or step around him too carefully."

Dick bit back the wave of anger. While he and Bruce were on good terms these days, they were both touchy sometimes about Damian, when the other would offer an interpretation of some behavior. Bruce had never quite snapped, "He's my son, you don't need to tell me how he thinks," and Dick had never quite snarled, "I acted as his parent for a year and I still know him better than you do, so don't explain him to me," but, well, they knew each other well enough to have read those thoughts on each other's faces. 

But Bruce had said he'd warn Damian. So. And...Bruce was turning to leave, and when they were in the manor they would probably set this behind them. Dick said, "B," and to Batman's tilted head, said, "Thank you. For stopping me."

"Of course," Batman said, and that was that.

Bruce hadn't been wrong. Damian would react badly to being avoided. Dick knew from the other side how it had stung, when he'd been young and hurt in ways that Bruce had felt guilty about. Guilt in Bruce had always equated to emotional distance that read as coldness, and Dick didn't want to replicate that pattern. In the dinner that followed, in the weeks that followed, Dick tried to be as present as he could. Tried to set his lingering horrified guilt aside, as not useful, as not productive, as not what Damian needed.

They hashed it out a bit before dinner that first day. Damian was wearing a turtleneck, but that wasn't unusual for him. Dick said he was sorry, for hurting Damian and for getting caught in the first place, and Damian nodded and flicked his fingers in dismissal and said, "No harm done. You did stop, after all." 

Dick shook his head a bit, because he didn't deserve any kind of credit.

"I think the mind control rather overrode your situational awareness, though," Damian mused. "You clearly registered Father's presence, but you still looked startled when he tackled you." He smiled, a little mean, satisfied thing that made Dick smile back. For whatever reason it was easier to accept Damian's forgiveness if it came with a side of pettiness. 

Dick worked at acting normal after that. Not fake, not too upbeat or too solicitous, but warm. He cut down a bit on offers of physical affection, but didn't cut them out altogether. Telegraphed them, but then he usually did that after any tough case that might have activated Damian's startle reflex. In a couple weeks it felt like their interactions were fairly close to normal.

There was a call from the New York cape community for a few weeks of help while they were short-staffed: someone was on vacation, and someone else was recovering from a broken leg, and so forth. With a range of normal interactions with Damian under his belt and a little distance from the event, Dick jumped at the excuse to flee Gotham for a bit.

He wasn't proud of it, but it was probably a good move. The guilt he'd set aside had grown when he'd been actively ignoring it. He wasn't Bruce, so his form of brooding involved less nighttime lurking on gargoyles and more aimless daytime wandering through a city with which he was familiar but not completely at home. He walked off most of the guilt and the anguished fear over what-might-have-been. By the end of the second week he felt better, but he still put in a text to Bruce that he'd be staying for a third week to wrap up some loose ends.

Coming back to his airbnb that Friday night, he felt a whisper of wrongness that put him on alert.

Or, no, he saw when he took two steps in and looked at the main room. Not wrongness, just difference. The intruder had made no effort at concealment: there were two bowls of popcorn waiting on the coffee table, and a blu-ray of a Cirque performance on top of the television set. Dick's lips twitched. Bait for a Dick Grayson trap, if he was not mistaken.

"I'm back," he called.

He heard the toilet flush and the water run, and then a scowling Damian--the real bait for the trap, though he probably thought of it differently--emerged from the bathroom. "You're later than I calculated. The popcorn's probably cold."

"Best eat it now, then," Dick said cheerfully, and sat cross-legged on the couch. "Someone does know you're here, right? B or Alfred?"

A haughty sniff. "I informed Pennyworth of my plans." Damian came closer and settled on the couch next to him. Damian wasn't wearing a turtleneck, and his neck was clear of bruising.

"You bring overnight stuff?" Dick asked. 

A sharp nod, and the nervousness Dick caught in the lift of Damian's chin sent another little flick of achy guilt through him. He never wanted Damian, who straddled the line between being his kid brother and just his kid, to be unsure of his welcome. "There is an exhibit at the Met that I would like to see tomorrow," Damian said stiffly. "If you would be free to accompany me."

"I would," Dick said, and then carefully put his arm around Damian's shoulders. "I'm sorry," he said.

Damian was rigid. "You were under their control," he said. "You couldn't help it. And you already apologized."

"No, not for...well, not that I'm not sorry for that still. But for..." He pulled back a moment, so he could meet Damian's eyes. "I'm sorry I left. I just...I really scared myself, Damian. And I've had some times of being brainwashed before that...it really messes me up. So I needed to get my head on straight, and sometimes, for me, it's easier to do that from a little distance. I'm sorry for not talking it through with you first."

Another sharp little nod. "Is it working?"

"Yeah," Dick settled and pulled Damian back in. "I'll be back in Gotham next week," he promised. "Just need to wrap up a few things here."

"All right," Damian said. He was still holding himself stiffly, and Dick wondered if the half-hug was unwelcome. He was going to disengage casually when Damian forced out, "I'm sorry too."

"No. What?"

"I should have been able to take you down," Damian said grimly. "I have the training."

Dick weighed that. He hadn't considered that Damian might be feeling guilty himself, though it was one of those things that seemed obvious now that he knew it. "I'm not badly trained myself," he said. "And I do have a longer reach than you."

And...it wasn't something he and Bruce had discussed explicitly, but: they'd screwed up some of Damian's reflexes, him and Bruce. They'd had to, given that his trained reflexes were lethal. But reworking those built-in assassin defenses had left some hesitations, some pauses, that left Damian more vulnerable. 

(It wasn't just that. There was a piece of it Damian wasn't saying to Dick, though he had told Batman, when they were waiting for Nightwing to wake up. "I did not react as quickly as I should have, or treat him as the full danger he was," Damian had admitted, after delivering a stringent post-mortem of their chase as he tried to lure Dick towards Batman and the subsequent fight when Dick caught up with him before he did. "I underestimated him, though I know how formidable he can be." Because Grayson was cheerful, and kind, and not ruthless when sparring as his former trainers had been, and Damian's body hadn't been scared, had reacted like this was just a game of rooftop tag.

"It happens," Batman had said, and, "you won't again."

Batman was preoccupied: one son beside him who had almost died. One son before him who was unconscious, with ghastly, extensive bruising from Damian's fists and his own. He did mean it as reassurance, although Damian was never sure whether it was reprimand, reassurance, or both.)

Damian made a dismissive tut of a sound. "Not that much longer a reach," he said. "And I believe I will be taller than you, in the end."

"Probably, given your dad's height," Dick agreed. He would happily give up any fighting advantage he had, if it would make Damian more able to defend himself.

Damian studied him for a moment. He said, grudging but sincere, "You could stay longer, if you need. Should another week not be sufficient. Pennyworth says that aside from anything else, sometimes you just fall prey to wanderlust."

"You can take the kid out of the circus, but not the circus out of the kid," Dick said. "But no, another week'll be fine for now." He tugged Damian in for a last squeeze and then let him go: his sort-of kid, a solid weight that kept him anchored to this couch, and this conversation, and ultimately--wherever Dick's guilt or wanderlust might take him--back to Gotham. "Now tell me about this exhibit we're seeing tomorrow."


	6. +1 Catch as Catch Can

Red Hood still resisted calls to collaborate, but for the last year or so he'd been (he would hate the description) rock-solid reliable about responding to distress beacons. He wasn't one for putting out a call for help himself, though, so when he did, even though he framed it as, "uh, no big deal, but if anyone's free...?", Dick dropped what he was doing and rushed to the scene.

When Nightwing arrived on the rooftop in question, though, the helicopter was already lifting off, with Red Hood inside. Dick watched it get higher and angle away from the building, relaying information to Red Robin and Spoiler and discussing options with a hammering heart. Maybe the Batwing could intercept...? Or would that just make Jason a hostage...?

A figure tumbled out of the helicopter. Brown jacket. Red helmet. Out over open ground, but still close to the building. Dick started to run, eyeing angles, speed, distances, with an eye towards intercepting Red Hood's fall. Grapple, anchor, line. Dick was never sure, later, whether he said, "Clark, _please_ ," in a whisper or a level tone or a loud shout as he threw himself off the rooftop.

***

A digression, while they are both moving through the air, while Jason is thinking a litany of "oh shit," and seeing Nightwing, "but maybe?" but mostly "oh shit," and Dick is not thinking in words at all, which is not to say he isn't thinking.

They all had some training at Bruce's hands, which meant they tended to value all-around competence. But as Jason had returned to the family, as there'd been more family gatherings and team-ups, there'd been some knock-off effects. One was a tendency for them to think increasingly in terms of specialties. There were enough of them now that--beyond the basics--it just made sense to have areas of deep focus, and to seek each other out for a consult in that person's area of expertise. 

Babs for hacking; Jason for explosives and plots; Cass for stealth surveillance and fights against impossible odds. Tim probably had the largest portfolio: chemistry, detection, long-range strategies, corporate financial crimes, and simply those odd bits of knowledge that didn't fall neatly into a given category. Steph or Jason for Gotham street-level knowledge; Tim for the upper crust. Steph for witnesses who wanted to do right but were reluctant to get involved. Damian still worked primarily with Bruce as Robin, but his siblings were beginning to turn to him--and Damian glowed when they asked and Bruce directed the query his way--for knowledge of weaponry, as well as art theft or forgery. 

Dick had trained when there were only two of them for all of Gotham. He was a generalist through and through: all the younger ones had carved out areas where they surpassed him. This wasn't to say that his family didn't respect his abilities or call on him for help, because they did. He wasn't Cass, but you could throw him in a fight and know he would hold his own; he wasn't Tim, but you could send him a case file and expect some insightful questions or an intuitive leap in response; he wasn't Jason, who had plans inside plans, but he was a good person to have around when your plans went to shit and you had to adapt on the fly. And while Tim had files of research and Damian had stories from both his parents, Dick had years of lived experience: you could ask him about any vigilante or villain and know that, if he hadn't worked with or against them, he would know someone who had.

Jason, Steph, and Tim had been shooting the breeze one day and gotten onto labels a bit, something that started with Jason and Steph saying that Tim would be the obvious mastermind if they ever needed to engineer a movie-style heist. They began imagining an introduction sequence for Drake's Eleven. Jason was maybe the one who thought in labels more than the rest of them (he had a tendency to refer to himself as the Black Sheep, the Rebel, the Dead Robin), but Steph dubbed him Wild Card Explosions Expert for Tim's team before he could drag one of those out, and he rolled with it happily.

"I wanna be The Brawler, can I be The Brawler?" Steph asked, and Jason, in a good mood, fist bumped her and said, "Hell yeah."

"I'm sending Cass in on infiltration," Tim said, reluctantly amused, and the other two nodded in agreement.

"The Stealth Master," Jason said. "Where you gonna put the stabby assassin child?" 

"It's your hypothetical team, you don't need to include him, I guess," Steph said when Tim hesitated.

"No, he can be weapons expert," Tim said. "Or, no, I'm making him getaway driver."

"Sure, yeah, that kid is a speed demon," Jason said. "The Lead Foot."

"Agent A on supplies and comms, of course, and Babs is The Hacker," Tim said, "and then Dick is....hmmm."

They all pondered it. "I mean, skills-wise, he's obviously The Acrobat, right?" Steph said, miming a marquee with her hands on 'The Acrobat.'

"Do I need an acrobat, though?" Tim said. "Maybe to evade motion sensors, if I weren't already sending Cass in...?"

Steph sighed. "And if you do she needs another role, and obviously it's The Fighter so I lose mine. Dammit, no, I want to be the Bruiser this time around. The Brawler. The Muscle. What else could he be, besides The Acrobat?"

"Daddy's favorite," Jason said a bit derisively.

"Pretty sure that is also Cass," Steph said lightly. "And also not a heist role." 

They'd all thought about it for a moment. Jason, maybe feeling a little guilty for the previous moment of spite, said, "He'll kind of slot in wherever you put him, though, right? The guy's like the utility knife of vigilantism. The Improviser....? He's fast on his feet when things don't go to plan."

Tim frowned and said a little coolly, "If someone else is being Mastermind, maybe, but my hypothetical heist is going to go to plan," and Jason and Steph exchanged amused looks around him.

"Stabby Child Assassin Wrangler," Steph had offered. "It's like your chosen getaway driver is a temperamental racehorse that comes with a calming companion goat." 

Jason spit out the soda he was drinking because he was laughing so hard at that, and there was a pause for cleanup before Tim said, "How about information gathering? He's good with strangers."

Steph nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. Throw him in a tux and send him in to eavesdrop on the marks. He can be The Charmer."

So that was Dick, to his family. The Acrobat, of course: even now that the novelty had long since worn off, they would still occasionally have a moment of appreciation if they were looking over fight footage. But that might have seemed to them like damning with faint praise, since the old thrill had gone threadbare through exposure and (let's be honest) showy flips weren't as immediately, obviously useful in crime-fighting as the ability to hack, or dismantle a bomb, or disarm an armed man with a sword, so: the People Person.

True, of course. Dick was born into love and laughter and springtime sunshine, and he radiated that warmth all the rest of his days. Mary Grayson returned to the trapeze a few months after he was born, and it was Dick's introduction to the spotlight, the moment when Haly said to the crowd, "she's had a good reason!" and for a second the crowd focused on Dick, held tight and secure by a friendly dancer. The crowd cheered generously, and the person holding him laughed, and Dick blinked and smiled in response.

The acrobatics hadn't started that long after, though, and that was what Dick himself would have claimed as his best skill. Mary Grayson placing Dick's tiny hands on the trapeze bar to get the feel of it; John Grayson lifting Dick above his head in the air and getting a crow of delight in response. Dick didn't remember the first time he caught the trapeze bar when they swung it gently towards him; the first somersault; the first swing through the air. They all took place when he was so young that they were washed away in the way of most childhood memories. 

The memories of a million practice sessions hadn't washed away, though they'd blurred together. Learning when to let go of one bar to reach for his parents' outstretched arms. Equally, knowing when not to let go, when to swing back and build up more momentum, because things weren't aligning right, because if he did let go it would only result in a tumble into the safety net they used at practice. He did sometimes anyway, of course, thinking he might be able to save the move. "I thought I might have it. I was close?!" he would say, bouncing out of the net, and John Grayson would reply with a smile, "Close ain't a catch. Let's try again."

When you started something that young, when you practiced and used a skill pretty much daily for decades, the boundaries between natural talent and skill, between instinct and calculation, were meshed beyond untangling. Dick was the best in the family at acrobatics; he was also, though neither he nor they thought much about it, the best at what the acrobatics taught him, what they required from him in order to do the showy flips: a bone-deep, wordless ability to calculate physics, forces, speeds, and distances on the fly. 

Which meant that while Jason was thinking, "oh shit," as he plummeted toward the ground, and "....probably not but maybe?" because he had seen Nightwing right other situations that had gone sideways, Dick was thinking even as he started running that it was absolutely no good. The distance, the angles, the speed weren't workable for him to intercept Jason, and the survival odds from that height were next to none. Dick wasn't framing his thoughts in words, but he was thinking very clearly and coherently nonetheless, and he knew that his best efforts would get him close; and that close wasn't a catch.

His body arcing through the air was simply a wordless, desperate prayer that he was wrong.

***

Perhaps he was.

Perhaps Dick, this once, miscalculated out of a fear that he was going to lose his once-lost and only-barely-found brother again. Perhaps he would have managed, to his own surprise, a successful catch (where, given momentum and angles, successful allows for injuries).

Perhaps not. The consequences: Jason's death; a lifelong guilt and grief; deep fractures in the barely-knitted-together family.

Dick would never know for certain. His siblings hadn't been wrong when they labeled him The Charmer, after all. A very long time ago, the first Robin's sunshine smile had captured a piece of Clark Kent's heart, and he never lost it in all the years that followed. When Clark heard Nightwing's voice in distress asking for help, he, like Dick, started moving, and at a far greater speed.

Red and blue. A blur of motion before Superman was setting them both, very carefully, back on the rooftop. One hand on each of their shoulders. "Are you all right?" 

"Whoa," Red Hood said. "Yes? Thanks?"

Nightwing just nodded. 

Superman looked at the helicopter, now further away and accelerating. "Would you like me to go get them?"

Nightwing didn't answer, just looked at Red Hood. "Oh. Man. No?" Red Hood said. He was a little more rambly, more hyped on adrenaline, than usual. "Yeah, I guess not, no. Gotham criminals and all. Thanks, but B's going to flip his lid already, no need for him to go nuclear." Calming a little, into his usual cocky confidence. "Besides--let 'em run. I know how to reel them back."

Superman frowned, but then his face took on that distant listening look before he nodded decisively and said, "I'm needed elsewhere. Tell Batman I'll be happy to discuss things with him later." A streak of red and blue, and he was gone.

"Shit," Jason said, but he sounded relatively happy. "I'm not complaining, but that was weird. But good! Thanks and all. Uh, it was you that called him, right? Because I'm like 99 percent sure I wasn't thinking about him or screaming his name in terror or anything."

Nightwing nodded. 

"Don't worry. I'll take the heat from B."

Nightwing shook his head. "It'll be fine," he said. 

His voice didn't sound quite right, and Jason said, "Hey, are you--" before interrupting himself to answer a question on comms, to explain what had happened to Red Robin and Spoiler and wave them off from providing additional backup. When he signed off he turned to where Dick was staring out into thin air, into the space that Jason had fallen through, and said, "All's well that ends well, though I am gonna--"

It would have finished with some threat to the people in the helicopter, no doubt, but it was then that Dick's knees crumpled.

He'd learned to fall properly when he was too young to remember it, and training held; there was a modicum of grace and control that made it look almost intentional, even if it ended with him on his ass on a dirty rooftop. Red Hood stood above him in a moment of startled silence before crouching down. "Wing? You all right? What's wrong?"

Dick shook his head. Wrapped his arms around his knees, each hand holding tightly to the opposite wrist. He was shaking very hard.

"Hey. Hey, it's all right. I'm all right. Everything's all right," Hood said. He had his hands stretched out a bit, like he wasn't sure what to do. Haul Nightwing back up? Pat him on the shoulder? 

Dick shook his head. Said, "Sorry. I know. Sorry." He needed to get himself together. Jason was startled now, but it could turn to anger soon; he'd been the one falling, after all, the one at risk. This wasn't about Dick, and it was still an active point of contention between Jason and Bruce, whenever Jason felt Bruce was making Jason's death into a chapter in Bruce's story.

He underestimated Jason. A sharp indrawn breath on Red Hood's part. "Oh, fuck. Bad memories, huh? Shit, I'm sorry." Jason settled on the ground, taking the helmet off. Rested his hands on Dick's, and after a moment tugged Dick's fingers gently from where they were digging into his arms to hold them in his. "Hey, match my breathing for a little bit, okay?"

He did. Looked down at his gloved hands in Jason's, and switched the hold, to a more secure grip on Jason's wrists that Jason mirrored. Breathed.

"You here with me, Nightwing?" Jason asked seriously after a bit. 

Dick nodded, not looking up. "Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for," Jason said firmly. "I'm sorry, to trigger bad memories."

Dick shook his head. "It wasn't your fault. I'm sorry. I didn't ask. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Honestly I didn't even have time to be scared, you know? You were there--"

Dick flinched. He hadn't been any good; wouldn't have been any good.

"--and you thought to call Superman, so everything played out okay. Seriously. Thanks for coming, okay?"

When Dick didn't say anything in response, Jason went on, aimless rambling meant to distract. "And thanks for calling in the cavalry. A plus backup skills. I'm sorry it sucked for you, though. If B gives you any shit whatsoever for calling Superman into Gotham, you let me know and I'll yell at him. Fuck, I'd be happy to. You know me, I could yell at him competitively."

Dick smiled a bit at that and looked up finally, seeing the relief cross Jason's face. "It'll be fine," he said. He didn't think Bruce would give him any flak. 

"Okay, but if it isn't," Jason said. "I could yell at B for England, is all I'm saying."

Dick managed a smile. "And all I'm saying is, if yelling at B is a competitive event, there's no way I am not in podium contention. I would win _at least_ the silver." 

Jason barked out a laugh. "I'll grant you that. You might even win on volume and duration, but I like to think I have more varied insults. Anyway, what do you say, you wanna to blow this popsicle stand?"

"Yeah," Dick agreed, and then frowned. "Literally or figuratively?" Sometimes you needed to clarify with Jason.

"Figuratively, geez, I'm not--though I am going to explode the shit out of that helicopter, somewhere along the line. No, not with people in it." A little pause. "You wanna help plan?"

A surprise, but a very welcome one. " _Yes_ ," Dick said. He thought Jason seemed a bit taken aback by his intensity, but it wasn't like Dick hadn't started the whole vigilante thing out of vengeful impulses on behalf of his loved ones.

"So, okay," Jason said, and tugged him upward. 

A moment of dissonance: Dick started to go by habit to the rooftop edge, while Jason headed towards the access door. "Uh, you don't want us to take the long way down, maybe?" Jason said, about to put the helmet back on.

"Oh. No thanks," Dick said. Unless Jason was more rattled than he was letting on... "Unless you want to?" 

Jason rolled his eyes. "I'm fine. I wasn't--" He put the helmet on mid-sentence and started moving towards the roof edge, and perhaps cut off, "the person having a meltdown on a rooftop."

"I'm just saying," he said when he had the helmet on, "I know B had a thing about getting back on the horse and all, but you can cut yourself some slack sometimes, Wing."

"Oh," Dick said. "No, it wasn't B. It was...my mom always said that even if the day was a struggle, you should end it on a good note." Barring actual injuries, they hadn't stopped a practice session until the last move of the day was a good one, even if it meant you let a new skill you were learning drop and went back to something much simpler and easier in order to stop on a success. "End on flight, not fall."

Jason wasn't moving, and he was impossible to read in the helmet. Dick shrugged a bit uncomfortably and said, "Also stairs are boring. Catch you on the flip side," before throwing himself off the rooftop for the second time that day.

Air, and the familiar whir of the grapple line, and his body moving through space until he landed lightly on the ground. Jason landing safe and sound beside him. For a second Dick could almost feel the pressure of John Grayson's hands resting on his shoulders, hear his father saying his part of the call and response between his parents that had ended each of those practice sessions: _Then that's the day's work done, eh?_

He smiled a little and held the memory to himself. The day's work wasn't done quite yet. "You want to start planning today?" Dick asked. "There's that safe house on Grant? I think that's the nearest."

"Sure," Jason said, and they headed to their respective bikes and towards the safe house. Planning was productive, and if Dick was still a little shaken, and stared at Jason a little too often, Jason was kind enough not to mention it. He thought Jason himself might have been grateful for the company, now that things had had the chance to sink in a bit more; Jason had gone quiet at one point, and shuddered hard, and said, "shit," under his breath. And when Dick had given him a quick hug goodbye, Jason had not only let it go on for more than the usual permitted three seconds, but also dropped his head to Dick's shoulder and leaned into the touch when Dick cupped his hand against the unbroken curve of Jason's head.

Dick dropped off at the manor after to fill Bruce in so he'd know the basics before he heard them from Clark. Dick was vague on details, but he hadn't been wrong: Bruce's face went blank, not angry. "Could you have?" he asked when Dick was done.

Dick shrugged. He didn't want to dwell on things that hadn't happened. "It all happened pretty fast. Who can say?"

A moment of long silence. (Bruce, studying the carefully casual expression and the still-tight body language of his eldest son, thought: _you_. Bruce didn't always know what to do with his children, but he never forgot what he had in them.) "Do you think you could have?" he asked again.

"I didn't think so at the time," Dick said tersely. He wasn't as sure, with the fever-bright clarity of those moments on the rooftop faded due to time and distance, with a few hours of discussing plots with Jason under his belt. "I don't know. I called Clark, anyway."

There wasn't yelling. Instead, Bruce reached over and rested his hand against the back of Dick's neck and said, " _Thank you_." 

And if Bruce... if Bruce saw the necessity, then it had really been...and Jason had almost... he'd almost let Jason... Part of Dick wanted to burst into loud reaction tears, but they didn't come. Instead, Dick leaned against his second father for a moment and thought _okay, okay_. 

All the little adjustments to timing and actions that could have changed things today, for better or worse. If Jason had decided against calling for backup. If Dick had arrived at the rooftop earlier. If Dick had been further away, arrived too late for even a call to Superman to change anything, unless Jason had had the thought himself. If Clark had been off in space or beyond reach. If, if, if.

Ultimately, the day could have ended badly, but it hadn't. Dick didn't love that despite his training, he'd been all but helpless, but they'd all walked away from it whole.

Bruce's strong hand was cradling the back of Dick's head, carding through his hair. John Grayson's words were echoing through Dick's memories again, along with Mary Grayson's standard response. He couldn't always remember their voices anymore, but he remembered their words, and he mouthed both parts of their usual call and response to himself as he leaned into Bruce's shoulder:

_Then that's the day's work done, eh?_

_Done, my loves, and what a good day's work it was._


End file.
